The Mother of All Disciplines? David S. Rosenblum Dean, School of Computing National University of Singapore
Academia on 3 Continents
Singapore
Singapore Universities
National University of Singapore ✓ Founded in 1905 as a medical school ✓ Research-intensive beginning in the 1990s ✓ Tenure-track system in 2000 ✓ 37,000 students (27,000 undergrad + 10,000 postgrad) ✓ Top-ranked in Asia
NUS and Globalization “A leading global university centered in Asia, influencing the future” ✓ Many undergrads spend time overseas NUS Overseas Colleges University- and faculty-level internships Student exchanges with many universities
NUS Faculties Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine Business School Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music School of Computing Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health Faculty of Dentistry Faculty of Science School of Design & Environment Yale-NUS College Faculty of Engineering Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Faculty of Law Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore University Scholars Program NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering
School of Computing ✓ Established in 1998 from Faculty of Science ✓ 2 Departments: Computer Science , Information Systems ✓ 111 Academic Staff (Tenure-Track & Teaching Track) ✓ 115 Research Staff (and we’re hiring!) ✓ 1650 Undergraduate Students ✓ 180 Masters Students ✓ 370 PhD Students ✓ S$10 million+ in research income per annum
#8 in the World #1 in Asia
Constraints and Challenges - Demographics - Constraints from Ministry of Education Undergraduate population of international students is decreasing to 15% overall, 30% for SoC - Unpopularity of computing among Singapore students - Slowly emerging IT industry - Slowly emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem - Low priority of computing in strategic research funding - Review processes for grant proposals - No regional research funding body
A Golden Age for Computing ✓ Our field now underpins virtually every facet of human endeavor ✓ This creates tremendous opportunity for collaboration in research and education ✓ And the research collaborations need not be “service-oriented”
Example Big Data Analytics for Healthcare • Understanding and predicting disease in Singapore, by integrating modeling and analyzing a vast range of patient data ✓ 90% of high school graduates are nearsighted ✓ Average age of heart failure is 8 years younger in Singapore than in New Zealand ✓ Diabetes among heart failure cases is 55% in Singapore vs 27% in New Zealand ✓ 11.3% of Singaporeans have diabetes, growing to 1 million people by 2050 Obesity a major factor for Chinese and Malays but not for Indians
Example Modeling and Predicting Disease Propagation • Exploitation of mobile devices for location tracking and for data management tasks ✓ Spread of dengue fever in Singapore Two-thirds of cases have unknown geographic origin ✓ Spread of MRSA in Singapore hospitals Singapore hospitals have a 5% conversion rate among inpatients
Making It Happen • Cross-faculty special-interest groups • Seed funding from faculties involved • Seed funding from NUS ODPRT • Strategic funding from MOE and NRF Must be done top-down and bottom-up
Some Dark Clouds on the Horizon
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